turn to fustian cutting, and force down wages by their competition; the manufacturers discovered that they could employ women and children, and the wages sank to the rate paid them, while hundreds of men were thrown out of employment.  The manufacturers found that they could get the work done in the factory itself more cheaply than in the cutters’ workroom, for which they indirectly paid the rent.  Since this discovery, the low upper-storey cutters’ rooms stand empty in many a cottage, or are let for dwellings, while the cutter has lost his freedom of choice of his working-hours, and is brought under the dominion of the factory bell.  A cutter of perhaps forty-five years of age told me that he could remember a time when he had received 8d. a yard for work, for which he now received 1d.; true, he can cut the more regular texture more quickly than the old, but he can by no means do twice as much in an hour as formerly, so that his wages have sunk to less than a quarter of what they were.  Leach {196} gives a list of wages paid in 1827 and in 1843 for various goods, from which it appears that articles paid in 1827 at the rates of 4d., 2.25d., 2.75d., and 1d. per yard, were paid in 1843 at the rate of 1.5d., 1d., .75d., and 0.375d. per yard, cutters’ wages.  The average weekly wage, according to Leach, was as follows:  1827, 1 pounds 6s. 6d.; 1 pounds 2s. 6d.; 1 pounds; 1 pounds 6s. 6d.; and for the same goods in 1843, 10s. 6d.; 7s. 6d.; 6s. 8d.; 10s.; while there are hundreds of workers who cannot find employment even at these last named rates.  Of the hand-weavers of the cotton industry we have already spoken; the other woven fabrics are almost exclusively produced on hand-looms.  Here most of the workers have suffered as the weavers have done from the crowding in of competitors displaced by machinery, and are, moreover, subject like the factory operatives to a severe fine system for bad work.  Take, for instance, the silk weavers.  Mr. Brocklehurst, one of the largest silk manufacturers in all England, laid before a committee of members of Parliament lists taken from his books, from which it appears that for goods for which he paid wages in 1821 at the rate of 30s., 14s., 3.5s., .75s., 1.5s., 10s., he paid in 1839 but 9s., 7.25s., 2.25s., 0.333s., 0.5s., 6.25s., while in this case no improvement in the machinery has taken place.  But what Mr. Brocklehurst does may very well be taken as a standard for all.  From the same lists it appears that the average weekly wage of his weavers, after all deductions, was, in 1821, 16.5s., and, in 1831, but 6s.  Since that time wages have fallen still further.  Goods which brought in 4d. weavers’ wages in 1831, bring in but 2.5d. in 1843 (single sarsnets), and a great number of weavers in the country can get work only when they undertake these goods at 1.5d.-2d.  Moreover, they are subject to arbitrary deductions from their wages.  Every weaver who receives materials is given a card, on which is usually to be